A Nouveau Look

Josef Hoffmann And His World Move Back To Center Stage

Josef Hoffmann, a master at integrating ornament with function, is the subject of a major architecture exhibition opening Saturday at the University of Chicago`s David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art.

Hoffmann was an Austrian architect who lived from 1870 to 1956 and is closely identified with the Art Nouveau movement that bridged the turn of the century.

The exhibition features 261 drawings and 20 objects typifying Hoffmann`s skill in designing not only buildings, but also most of the finishing materials, furniture and utilitarian devices that went into them.

At a time when the lively and colorful forms of Postmodernism continue to dominate late 20th Century architecture, Hoffmann`s work has generated fresh attention.

The Smart Museum exhibition, accompanied by a seminar and other events, debuted at the Goldie Paley Gallery at Moore College of Art in Philadelphia. Curators there drew on thousands of Hoffmann drawings preserved in Vienna`s Austria Museum of Applied Art. The Smart showing has been enhanced by items from its permanent collection and others lent by Chicago area collectors.

Art Nouveau produced variously effervescent and elegant works marked by two basic approaches to form-making. Sinuous, organically inspired shapes were employed by the likes of Antonio Gaudi and Hector Guimard. A more linear geometry was used by such architects as Charles Rennie Mackintosh and reflected the simplicity of the Arts and Crafts movement.

Hoffmann was closer to Mackintosh than Guimard in most of his conceptualizations, but tight-lipped about the influences on his work. In an introduction to the Hoffmann exhibition catalogue, Eduard F. Sekler writes that Hoffmann`s creative imagination ``was fed from deep sources that he guarded with utmost care ...`` and adds: ``This striving to keep a most intimate zone private and protected probably accounts for (Hoffmann`s) highly reticent and occasionally very idiosyncratic behavior toward others.``

Whatever the influences, the show at the Smart Museum demonstrates the drawing process by which the beauty of the finished works evolved. Most of the drawings are in pencil on graph paper and carry traces of erased lines revealing paths taken before a final image was defined.

Hoffmann`s work included entire buildings, interiors, companion objects of every sort and stage settings. ``Furniture, lights, fabrics, silver, wallpaper all seem at times not merely to wrap around the architecture, but to define it,`` observes catalogue essayist Charles Vallhonrat.

Most of the drawings in the exhibition are of furniture, containers, fabric patterns, dining services, baskets, lamps, fashion accessories, jewelry and writing accessories. Objects on view range from a silver candelabrum and an ice pail to a tea service and cutlery sets.

Hoffmann`s work will be the departure point for a daylong seminar Saturday at Breasted Hall in the Oriental Institute, 1155 E. 58th St. Under discussion will be the collaboration between architects and manufacturers leading from the designer`s vision to marketable, mass-produced merchandise.

Chicago architect-partners Margaret McCurry and Stanley Tigerman will be seminar participants. Others will be Susan Grant Lewin of Formica Corp., Hazel Siegel of Knoll Textiles, John Laughton of American Standard and Mark Hacker of Swid Powell. Registration will cost $25, and information is available by calling 312-702-0200.

Other related events, each to be held at 1 p.m. in the Smart Museum lobby, will include:

- A Sunday talk on stage design by Linda Buchanan, a Court Theatre set designer.

- A May 19 reading from the works of Karl Kraus, a close friend of Hoffmann in turn-of-the-century Vienna. Kenneth J. Northcott, University of Chicago professor emeritus, will be the reader.

- A June 9 reading by Northcott of selected passages by other Hoffmann literary contemporaries.

``Josef Hoffmann: Design as Totality`` will be the subject of a lecture by Franz Schulze, Lake Forest College professor of art, at 7:30 p.m. May 22 at Cochrane-Woods Art Center, 5540 S. Greenwood Ave.

The Smart Museum, 5550 S. Greenwood Ave., is open 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Friday, and noon to 6 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays. The Hoffmann exhibition runs through June 16.